Humanity and Nature Studies

This major mixes the liberal arts with the environmental crunchiness that so many students want. With humanity and nature studies, you can craft your major from a menu of courses—from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to create a major that matches your interests.

Your studies combine the cultural with the natural to shape well-rounded individuals ready to engage in issues like global climate change. During your four years, you will develop a sophisticated understanding of how humans continue to conceive, construct, and fulfill their relationships to the natural world.

Upon completion, you will be prepared for graduate or professional studies in fields such as environmental law and environmental humanities, the Peace Corps, or for a variety of environmentally focused careers in business, education (“green teaching” before and afterschool programs), government, industry, advertising, public policy, community planning, nature therapy, or the non-profit sector.

Students majoring in humanity and nature studies can choose from three emphases: global cultural perspectives, leadership and a new future, or reviving a natural history.

Faculty

Matthew O'Laughlin

Education

Ph.D. Social Psychology, University of Oregon

M.S. Social Psychology, University of Oregon

B.A. Psychology & B.A. Social Philosophy, Marquette University

Profile

As an educator I am deeply committed to the specific individuals that join me in the classroom and I teach courses in the spirit of mutual inquiry. In collaboration, my students and I explore the cross-disciplinary borderlands of psychology, creating new courses in ecopsychology, sustainable agriculture, political psychology, and conflict resolution. I pursue a student-centered, participatory approach in the classroom that focuses on creating a personal connection with students.

With each new term I ask myself: how can more student voices shape the classroom experience?, how can more of the responsibility for learning be placed into the hands of the students?, how will students discover and articulate what their own educational priorities, curious whims and deeply important questions are?, and how will students satisfy these priorities, whims, and questions in and outside the classroom?

At base, every class that I teach is intended to facilitate the growth of the individual as a whole person with knowledge, competence, and confidence. As an educator, I bring the knowledge and practices of psychology to this meeting, but I never lose sight that this is a meeting of people. Education develops in relationship.